The cover mockup for my hybrid memoir

Space Heart. A Memoir in Stages

Photomontage artist Joan Proudman did the cover art http://joan-proudman.squarespace.com. The launch will be November 2, first in my town of Belfast, Maine, then on to Florida, home of my publisher Burrow Press https://burrowpress.com  --- and beyond.

It’s 1962, one year after Alan B. Shepherd became the first American in outer space. This year, John Glenn orbits the earth three times, the first communications satellite, Telstar, is launched, and sea turtles once again come ashore as they have for millennia to lay their eggs on wild Florida beaches just miles from Cape Canaveral. In the spirit of the go-go time and place, eleven-year-old Linda Buckmaster becomes one of the first children to successfully undergo open-heart surgery using the recently perfected heart-lung machine.

In this hybrid memoir, Linda weaves into her story as the daughter of a rocket engineer the juxtaposition between cutting-edge technology and the natural world on the empty barrier island that came to be called the Space Coast. That contrast is written on her own small body as surgeons work to correct a congenital heart defect. Encountering more of a problem than they or Linda’s parents anticipated, they improvise a solution using materials developed for the space industry.

Alternately lyrical and narrative, the book moves forward to later years when Linda begins to reflect on the events of those times and the meaning of her experience.